Fanfiction -- fan-created pictures or stories based on another book or based in the universe of someone else's creation -- is an extremely common way for readers to celebrate an author or the world of that author's imagination and to connect with other fans. But is fanfiction legal?
To determine the legality of fanfiction, let's first take a look at what the law says about the topic.
The rights of a copyright owner
Just by writing a story or novel, the author hold an automatic copyright to that story or novel. No official registration is necessary (although you can bet that any widely published author's material has been officially registered by the time it reaches your eyes, either by the author's efforts or through the author's publishing house).
The copyright owner obviously owns the right to put his or her name on the material and claim it (rightfully) as his or her own, but there are other rights automatically granted to a copyright owner that will become relevant to our discussion on fanfiction. Those rights include:
The right to reproduce the work The right to display, perform, or play the work in public The right to distribute copies of the work The right to prepare derivative works(You'll notice that the copyright holder has these exclusive rights regardless of whether or not money changes hands.)
The first three points address using the work in its entirety, which isn't relevant to our discussion on fanfiction. However, we'll need to take a closer look at the fourth point.
Derivative Works
A derivative work, according to the US Copyright Office, is "a work based on or derived from one or more already existing works." Even if the resulting work is a completely different kind of work -- a movie based on a book, for example, or a story written about a song -- basing one work on another created a derivative work.
Another example of a derivative work is the Harry Potter movies -- JK Rowling gave her explicit permission to have the movies made, in exchange for compensation of some sort for her role as the creator of the Harry Potter world.
Fanfiction as a derivative work
It's clear that fanfiction, by its very nature, is based on an existing work.
There are some limitations, such as Fair Use, to a copyright holder's exclusive right to use their material. However, fair use has very specific applications -- educational purposes, criticism, reporting, and so on -- that do not readily apply to fanfiction.
The bottom line: Creating a derivative work is the exclusive right of the copyright holder. Since fanfiction is a derivative work, creating or distributing fanfiction without express permission -- even if you credit the original author, and even if you distribute it for free -- is considered copyright infringement.
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